Woo-young didn't tell Hana where he was going or what he was doing, and Hana didn't ask. She is not really inclined to pry at the best of times, and she has gotten good enough at reading his expressions that she can tell he's unhappy to be doing whatever-it-is he's doing. Even if he is, probably, doing it with friends.

(Her mind brings up comparisons between Woo-young's departure and that of esper teams going into Nightmare, but that's probably just that she's been living and breathing Nightmare related everything ever since it decided to show up.)

Instead she patiently sits in their silo, making little origami flowers as she thinks. Yesterday had been animals, but today she's in a flower sort of mood. Probably the kissing guiding before he headed out to his whatever-it-is. That's got her in a good mood despite her backlash enforced anxiety. Quasar is also going to see about finding her a secondary partner to hold her hand while she works at Nightmare, since Woo-young cannot actually be spared to hold her hand unfortunately. So her worries about herself, her partner, her job, her patients, Nightmare, and everything else are... well, as quiet as they're likely to be, during a confluence.

Without the spiral of anxiety to cloud her thoughts, she can't help but notice that there are a number of things that aren't quite adding up.

Quasar is... strangely nervous about Nightmare. Just Tae-gun avoiding it, to avoid an ex-partner, that's perfectly explicable. She doesn't know what happened between them, but it's not particularly odd for ex-partners to avoid each other. (All of hers avoid her.)

But it's not just Tae-gun, and it's not just Woo-young, either. It's the entire guild. She has had time to get a feel for Quasar's operations by now, and they're very open with working with other guilds and organizations. They have a lot of ties to many international organizations, and a lot of fingers in proverbial pies. Not necessarily doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but a lot of the - support stuff. It only really became obvious after Kim Hye-jin's hospitalization, but. They sure do have a lot of weight to throw around, don't they, and they are not afraid to use it, either. They are quick to support espers in need whenever they can, guild member or no. Comparatively, when it comes to Nightmare, they're extremely hands off. That's not to say they won't support her - the minute she even breathes a hint of needing something, like wanting someone compatible to help mitigate backlash for her long work at Nightmare, Quasar swoops in to help her. Immediately. But that's it. It's just her.

It sort of made her angry, at first, that a guild would avoid a dungeon so thoroughly on an organizational level, hold back resources that other people need to do their jobs even when it didn't risk them or their members directly. She had to push, to get assigned to Nightmare. But with context .... Is it the dungeon, really? There are other dungeons that deal in psychological warfare. Quasar doesn't flinch at assisting with those.

Woo-young hasn't calmed down at all about her work, even though she hasn't stepped inside the dungeon once, and Nightmare hasn't gone and figured out a way to snatch her out from under everyone. He's still just as concerned, if not more so. Always carefully checking her over to see if she's okay.

With context of what her new guild is like, it's very odd how they just. Dumped Lee Tae-gun's former partner. So suddenly and abruptly. She wouldn't have expected that of them, especially now that she's in it and can see how - familial this guild is arranged. But there aren't any long lost friends of Kang Jaeha, meeting up with him over drinks. No one likes to talk about him at all.

And what reason does anyone at all have to shoot an S-rank fire esper?

Maybe it's not the dungeon Quasar's afraid of.

There's the strangely localised flash of blue light that doesn't reflect off anything and you can't see unless you're directly looking at it that accompanies Woo-young's teleportation powers and then there's Woo-young, arriving far, far too late at night.

"Oh. You're still up."

"Oh. Yes. Hi. I think I lost track of time."

She did. She can tell by the number of paper flowers she's made, without even needing to check the clock. She... should probably go to bed sooner rather than later. Considering her early mornings.

He squints at her. "...everything alright?"

"Yes." He's not going to believe that if she leaves it at that, so she doesn't. "You just seemed - on edge? I wanted to make sure you were okay. Did everything go well?"

"Oh. Yeah. Um. We were—strategising. Had a bunch of ideas about ways to make dungeons safer."

He does not have a good answer if she asks why he didn't want to include her.

Fortunately for him, she doesn't ask. She just nods.

"Okay. Let me know if I can help." She squints at him, then adds, "Aside from giving you a hug, I mean."

She can tell by the stiff way he's holding himself that he's a bit backlashed.

"I am not about to say no to a hug."

"I would be understanding if you did," she says, hugging him.

And then they can go to bed.

They can.

Hye-jin wakes up before Tae-gun, and spends longer than she'd like to admit hiding under the covers from the scary world that's going to ask her to do things. Her partner is warm and cozy, this bed is comfortable, and things in the outside world are hard, okay?

Eventually hiding from her problems grows boring, and she decides that, whatever else she's going to be doing, there will be no dungeons for her today. Similarly she probably won't be doing any until she's sorted through what the War Council (it amuses her to think of it this way) has come up with, and implemented the suggestions that seem actionable and worth the cost. She goes to cancel the dungeons, and. ... There aren't any to cancel. Okay. Fair. She wouldn't schedule her for running dungeons two days after she got fucking shot either. ... Actually, now that she thinks about it, she suspects that the dungeons yesterday were also secretly cancelled in advance, the systems just didn't update. The cancellation of them was kind of weirdly easy and straightforward, and there hadn't been any 'move to new date' options at all. She can't even bring herself to be mad about Quasar not being straightforward about going, 'No dungeons for you, missy,' because knowing her, she probably would have rebelled and tried to figure out how to do something freelance out of principle. Or maybe not. She really didn't want to deal with the media, either. (And still doesn't.)

Okay. Then... today can be figuring out what suggestions were made and how to implement them, and tomorrow can be tomorrow's problem.

The War Council left them lots of options for what to do, with all of their attached considerations. Suggestions include, but are not limited to:

• Getting a silo outside Korea.
• Primarily going to dungeons abroad.
• Adding some randomisation to picking dungeons.
  • Not complete randomisation, though, since Kang Jaeha can fake that.
• Replacing the yellow tape with canvas walls.
• Getting the media to delay its reporting rather than doing it live but still record everything so there are many eyes behind cameras.
• Decoys/body doubles/disguises.
• Having cameras on all dungeon portal sites being monitored constantly by remote teams.
  • AI monitoring of those (with an asterisk about whether it's possible to set that up without letting on that they're onto Kang Jaeha, requesting Tae-gun's input).
• Teleporting away from wherever they are at semi-random times even when they don't think they're compromised.
• Body cameras.
  • Being constantly monitored.
  • Having AI checking for proximity of other people and specifically for Kang Jaeha.
• Primarily going to dungeons that haven't had breaks.
• GPS tracking of their location.
• Woo-young teleports them from wherever they are if they seem compromised.
• Exploring the possibility that Kang Jaeha's power isn't completely undetectable by other espers.
• A complicated idea involving setting something up with their commscreen that pings a remote server to teleport them if they're tricked about whether they're in a dungeon.
• If their commscreens ever stop working for some reason and they're not in a dungeon an alarm is immediately sent to the War Council and Woo-young specifically.
• Having cameras by Nightmare constantly tracking whether Kang Jaeha is there.
• A complicated idea involving cryptography-enabled "captchas" to validate their receiving of some relevant comms.

Most of these have elaborations and more details, but a couple (such as the canvas walls thing and the media thing) are marked as being looked into already since they're good ideas regardless of anything else and don't depend on Hye-jin and Tae-gun's thoughts.

Gosh.

These are all such excellent options?

Technically she's working on getting a silo outside of Korea already; her secret underground base is underground in the Pacific Ocean (because Kang Jaeha can't get to her if there's a fuckton of water in the way) but she does actually think she might want a silo on the other side of the world for pure practicality reasons? For during a confluence or general overseas work. Instead of wasting teleportation power to get back to the other side of the world, only to be sent back to Europe-or-something the next day.

The technologically based things probably need to wait for Tae-gun to wake up? But she absolutely wants a little button to press to verify that she thinks she's in a dungeon. Probably as more sneaky jewelry, she's a little dubious about sticking with the earring after having used it before. That's not to say she's not still wearing it, because: no she is, just. Maybe some other sneaky tech options would be good.

These prospects combined with knowing she definitely doesn't have to do a dungeon or interact with the media today, and that she and Tae-gun have mended things between them, cheer her up immensely. She will poke at Quasar to please see about getting her and Tae-gun an alternate silo based somewhere on the other side of the world for teleportation efficiency and-also-avoiding-the-stalker reasons, and setting up a little button for registering that she thinks she's in a dungeon, and ask both Quasar and her lawyer to please tell the media to delay reporting on her location live to places, instead of reporting live...

Tae-gun makes a sleepy noise of some kind and snuggles up closer.

Awwwww look at him, so cute. She pets him, and presses a little kiss to the top of his head.

"Mmmm'rning," he mumbles without opening his eyes.

"Good morning, handsome," she says, affectionately.

Ok like objectively speaking he knows he's handsome but, but, but. 

But!!

He's so cute. She pets him accordingly.

"I've been reading through the safety suggestions everyone's made. How do you feel about having another silo on the other side of the world? I was thinking it'd be good for teleportation efficiency reasons, besides the safety concerns."

Well, so long as she's there with him. 

"'Sfine."

He's still booting up so he can't look at the actual list but he can answer questions about it.

"Sorry, I should wait until you're more awake, shouldn't I?" She kisses his forehead again. "Hi, Tae-gun-ah, did you sleep well?"

"Mmhmmmm. Slept w'th you. H'bout you? 'N 'sfine though, I c'n answ'r quest'ns."

"I did! Thank you." Kiss, pet pet. "Mostly I think it's just enthusiasm instead of real questions that require thought. Oh, and there was a nice suggestion about registering when we think we're in dungeons, and getting teleported if we're wrong, which I liked a lot."

"Reg'st'ring?" he asks, finally opening his eyes (to look at her because he wants the first thing he sees in the morning today to be her).